Gossip Column
The jobs seem to be pouring in for Ruth Padel, but I’ve only heard one joke about her failure to secure the Oxford Poetry Chair; something about sailing off up the Isis without a Padel.
She is appearing under the guise of highly esteemed poet at the Manchester Literary Festival and is judging the National Poetry Competition, so perhaps any poet that has ever paid a woman unwanted attention should subdue his hopes of gaining a prize.
There’s a big choice to make on 17th October at the Manchester, you can listen to poems and prose, from political activist John Amaechi, that demands dignity for those enduring the insecurity, exclusion and voicelessness associated with poverty, at St. Ann’s Church for £6, or pay £5 to hear Michael Schmidt OBE., FRSL launch his new Collected Poems at the Epernay Champagne & Cocktail Bar, where you’ll get a free glass of champagne.
Not to say there haven’t been cutbacks, the programme for the Festival is printed on the sort of paper they used during shortages in the Second World War and is devoid of pictures of the artists.
It’s great that Carol Ann Duffy is giving her Poet Laureate’s fee as prize money for a new poetry competition. But to let The Poetry Society organise it, they who nominated Ms Padel for the Oxford Chair? If she was looking for a poetry competition organiser, what was wrong with Wendy Webb, whose competitions breed profusely in the wilds of Norfolk? Heard on radio, Carol now refuses to be interviewed by men. Is that any man, or just one’s likely to ask “Why let the Poetry Society..."
I forgot to include in the last column, reference to The Guardian piece where Andrew Motion mused on the remarkable rise and rise of (Ted) Hughes’ reputation to the extent that he is now routinely accorded great poet status with a lack of scrutiny that does him no favours.
Like many ageing male poets, I am very forgetful, but I’m not yet so far gone as Steve Sneyd, who tells me, that he had to rack his brains for two days to recall the name of the Wetherspoon pub chain (but then I refresh my memory with them quite often).
Evidently the T.S.Eliot Prize Award Ceremony organisers forget the chain too as the booze ran out at their event before the end and The Poetry Book Society had to put two hundred quid into the coffers to restore orders.
Abney Park Cemetery held a spoken word event, with Tim Wells (“The Fire Poet” - shouldn’t it have been The Crem?) and others, but unlike the T.S.Eliot lot, arranged for open mic and liquid refreshments at a nearby pub, afterwards.
One place I went to recently, The Old Poets’ Corner in Ashover, had sufficient good ale, but no poetry readings (though it held Musicians’ Evenings, Quizzes, and Curry Nights.) But as we have said previously, old poets are very forgetful.
Keep your handwritten manuscripts chaps and chapesses; the National Trust of Scotland is auctioning off the right to buy a patronage plaque next to a poem by Burns, in his own writing, which will be displayed at the Robbie Burns Birthplace Museum when it opens next year. Prepare to sign in your own lily-white’ for about £50,000 for the privilege.
Back in May, The Independent issued a Top Ten of current poetry books. It was nice to see one by Homer in there. Just shows you, it doesn’t matter how long ago it was since you wrote a good poem, fame follows you. Due to become famous, perhaps, is the star of the new American T.V. series, Hung, which is about a bloke who is helped by a local female poet to market himself (and his remarkable penis) as a happiness consultant.
A glossy advertisement in The Poet Tree, for Larissa Schmailo’s poetry C.D. “Exorcism”, quotes one Rollo May with The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line. Well, O.K.?
Brendan Hawthorne, poet and editor of Read The Music poetry magazine, had a big erection to cope with recently, but he recovered from an initial stagger across the summit of the bigger-than-he-expected 4th plinth at Trafalgar Square to read a well-planned hour of his own work. Those that appeared on the plinth were pretty much allowed to do what they wanted, which is in contrast to those at Birmingham’s Arts Fest, who had to sign an agreement, which included a promise not to include anything that would bring The Council into disrepute. A case of jobs for the boys?
It’s been pointed out, after a Salisbury independent bookshop went to the wall claiming unfair competition from Oxfam, that Oxfam claims it supports fair-trade and yet goes out to monopolise the second-hand book business.
Borders Books website-salespeople can’t tell one Geoff Stevens from another; at least three of us have been lumped together as authors of The Phrenology of Anaglypta (mine), a novel called Trapped in a Landslide, a manual called Fixing Your P.C., and After Taxes — Managing Personal Wealth. Which one have they been sending the cheques to?
Andy Robson says that there have been lots of poems about paintings in Purple Patch recently. He’d like to see more paintings of poets and suggests a Vettriano of John Cooper-Clarke and a Hockney of Simon Robson. What about Tracy Emin doing Carol Ann Duffy or Sam Taylor-Wood doing Fiona Pitt-Kethley? To make Andy happy here’s a cartoon of poets Alex Barzdo, me, Brendan Hawthorne & Keith Melbourne.
PURPLE PATCH £6 for 3 issues(U K), £8 Europe. U.S.A. send $5 bill for one issue / or ask for subdcription details. All orders by mail from 25, Griffiths Road, West Bromwich B71 2EH, England Also available Urban District Writer, poems of urban living today — same prices. Contributions considered for both / either by letter containing S.A.E, I.R.C.'s ,or a dollar bill for reply postage.
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